Grzegorz Gwiazda is not here to play by the rules. His art doesn’t merely tiptoe around tradition—it throws it to the ground, reworks it, and presents it back to us in a way that demands new interpretations. As one of the most thought-provoking sculptors in contemporary art, Gwiazda’s work goes beyond aesthetic pleasure—it is an exercise in defiance, questioning, and transformation.

The Grounds for Sculpture, where Gwiazda’s art frequently engages with the public, is a fitting venue for his sculptures. It offers a space where abstraction, form, and chaos collide. His sculptures, while hinting at the human figure, constantly shift between figuration and abstraction, demanding that viewers rethink the very nature of the body in art.

The Language of Contradiction

To call Gwiazda’s work “figurative” is both entirely accurate and completely misleading. His sculptures hint at familiar forms—a cyclist, a Minotaur, a solitary thinker—but their very existence denies stability. His figures are always in flux, appearing to emerge from formless mass or disintegrate into it. This interplay between presence and absence, between the structured and the amorphous, gives his work a sense of movement rarely seen in sculpture.

He is fluent in the language of the past. He knows the academic rigor of 19th-century Central European sculpture as intimately as he understands the radical disruptions of the 20th-century avant-gardes. He does not reject history; he absorbs it, reconfigures it, and turns it against itself. Socialist realism collides with surrealism, expressionism dissolves into abstraction, echoes of Rodin are drowned out by violent distortions reminiscent of the Young British Artists. Each reference is immediately negated, every stylistic certainty unraveled.

The Painted Surface: Sculpture Beyond Sculpture

Gwiazda’s defiance extends beyond form into the very skin of his sculptures. He does not allow bronze or resin to rest in their expected monochromatic dignity. Instead, he paints them—sometimes delicately, sometimes with deliberate crudeness, leaving visible strokes and drips that challenge the medium’s supposed purity. This is sculpture that refuses to be only sculpture. It suggests painting, yet it is undeniably three-dimensional. It dares us to question whether a sculpture is truly finished, or if it is always in the process of becoming.

The Heretic’s Legacy

Gwiazda’s sculptures do not merely exist within the lineage of modern figurative art; they actively disrupt it. They remind us that no artistic style is sacred, that every movement contains the seeds of its own undoing. His work does not seek harmony—it thrives in tension. It is a testament to the fact that art is not about repeating history, but about breaking it open and discovering something raw, something urgent, something deeply, unsettlingly alive.

 

To witness a Gwiazda sculpture is to witness rebellion made tangible. It is to see the weight of the past and the pull of the future locked in perpetual struggle. It is, in the end, to see sculpture at its most vital: questioning, challenging, and forever refusing to be tamed.